Comments with Author name but without date and timestamp?

Hey,
is there any way to have comments signed with the author name but remove date and timestamps?

Thank you :slight_smile:

i don’t think so.


Comments in Writer

English documentation

Hi Pushik,


for my own education, could you explain why you want to remove such an important piece of information?

You need custom code for the purpose.
As always the “author” / initials will be taken from the user profile. The software can’t know who actually uses the keyboard.

Thanks for helping :slight_smile:
@Lupp: What custom code do you mean? And how to implement it?

@jfn: Because people always get disappointed when they can see that I didn’t read and comment immediately or in a certain timespan. I know, not “my” problem, but if it could be avoided and everyone could be happy when there simply is no timestamp and date, then why not using it?

And if you don’t have a date then everyone can blame you for the document not meeting a deadline even if it were delayed by someone else because you can’t prove otherwise?

There is no such feature. However, ODF defines dc:date element inside office:annotation (which represents the comment) as optional; so there’s nothing that could prevent from implementing such a feature. (@Regina knows more.)

File your enhancement request.

Richard P. Feynman: What Do You Care What Other People Think?

You never can prove anything based on volatile documents like those produced/edited with ordinary “Office” software. Concerning the current topic: Everybody having read this thread will know how to fake the DateTime stamps - and millions of people knew in advance.

If you want IT to manage documents so they are probative you need lots of additional considerations and means - and most likely it’s simply impossible now or will be tomorrow.

But: Certainly, even inscriptions carved in stone were falsified thousands of years ago.
Forgery and deception are among the most popular hobbies, and many have made a profession out of it. (Helped by DeepL translator.)

2 Likes

Hello,
in the
CommentTest.odt (32.8 KB)
quick demo using a macro, add any number of comments, then click the “Remove” button. This would remove all comments timestamps.
Note that the macro doesn’t save the document after removal nor reloads it. You’d have to do it yourself.

FWIW

1 Like

If you prefer “native Basic” without the dispatchhelper, you may use

Sub removeDateTimeStampsFromAllAnnotationsBy(Optional pAuthorString As String)
If IsMissing(pAuthorString) Then pAuthorString = "Lupp"
doc = ThisComponent
Dim dummyDT As New com.sun.star.util.DateTime
tfs = doc.TextFields
For Each tf In tfs
 If tf.supportsService("com.sun.star.text.textfield.Annotation") Then
  With tf
   If (.Author=pAuthorString) OR (pAuthorString="") Then .DateTimeValue = dummyDT
  End With
 EndIf
Next tf
End Sub

It removes DateTime stamps from annotations selectively concerning the author if the respctive string is set non-empty.
Note: The change only goes to the view for annotations that are entered for editing. Anyway the change is correctly stored and regarded after reload.

1 Like